Handoff mechanisms in current communication systems, such as 802.11 wireless local area network (“WLAN”), are simple, but slow. Slow handoffs may result in large numbers of transmissions being delayed and/or lost during handoff from one access point (“AP”) to another. This problem can become very severe if a mobile station (“MS”) is traveling from one AP coverage area to another at vehicular speeds.
The standards-based solution to this problem consists of the MS determining that the signal quality from the currently associated AP has dipped below some threshold value, or worse yet, that the MS tries to transmit a transmission to an AP, and all retries are exhausted. The decision process in the MS can take several hundred milliseconds (e.g., 600+). At that point, the MS begins searching for additional APs that it can associate with. Once a different AP is found, the MS associates with it and the handoff is complete.
A major disadvantage to this standards-based approach is that the MS hangs on to the old AP for quite a while before seeking a new AP with better signal quality. Thus, while the standards-based approach may be simple, it is not conducive to seamless handoffs.
Thus, there exists a need for a method for performing a seamless handoff.